How People Regenerate Themselves How do you handle severe life trauma and adversity? What traumas, experiences or woundings have been major life lessons or wakeup calls for you? Which woundings have been the hardest to recover from? Following are recommendations about how people overcome major loss so that they can regenerate themselves: Focus on what’s […]
Everyone gets bad breaks: that’s part of life. But people who experience a major trauma—the loss of someone very close, rape or assault, a major accident or disease, a major calamity and especially a catastrophic fire like I recently experienced—frequently feel their sense of control over their lives, and the vision they held of their […]
Catastrophic Loss is Very Difficult to Accept Dear Readers: I would give anything to not have to write this column. On September 6th, Roni and I and our two dogs went on a five mile morning hike out our front door in an area called Fourmile Canyon. We went on a trail I have hiked […]
Dear Neil: Over the past two years my husband has been growing away from me. He says it’s me just being emotional, but he doesn’t touch/cuddle me anymore, and he is no longer interested in how I feel. I don’t think that we will last much longer. Do you have any advice? No Longer Close […]
Psychotherapists who work with depressed and angry people encounter the same emotions and self-images in nearly all of their clients – and most of those emotions can be traced to the messages that kids are given about themselves in childhood. It is clear that depressed and angry people have not just gone through a disappointing […]
What attitudes have you adopted that give YOU justification for losing your temper? Here are some examples: “I know I am right, so I am entitled to demand that others shut up, listen to me and do what I say.” “I’ve had to deal with a lot of BS at work today, so people had […]
Dear Neil: Over the past five years, there have been many personal losses in my life. Recent years have been marked by the sudden deaths of people close to me: my stepfather, my uncle, two of my best girl-friends, my counselor and two close male friends. I also have lost several dear pets and a […]
Dear Neil: I am concerned about your generalizations that it takes two people to ruin a relationship. I have recently managed to escape a 25-year abusive relationship. One of the things I have learned is that it takes two to make a relationship but that one person alone can destroy it – by being emotionally […]
Dear Neil: As a longtime reader of your column, I’m curious as to what you have to say about the recent separation of former U.S. Vice President Al Gore to his wife, Tipper – after 40 years of marriage and after having raised four children together. What is your take on longtime marriages splitting apart? […]
Note: This is the first of a two-part series. Click here for part two Is jealousy a sign of love? Does it induce commitment? Does it teach people to not take their relationship for granted? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you’re in good company, because various researchers and marriage counselors have come […]